I have been in paleontology for a while and come to the conclusion (now that I ain't working as a scientist anymore and not subject to outside fundings), that we can already find life across our Universe, only if we know WHERE to look! So thats my theory below, and my arguments for finding such advance life around us! And from what I believe, I can say that they are huge gang up there waiting for us!!!

I did learn with years of works that to be a very good scientist you must be humble toward nature and even more humble toward the Universe!
Why is so? Its only because when you see that at every scientific discovery, comes its new set of questions, you understand that the more you discover about the world the less you understand it! Which means that our environment is always becoming weirder as we advance in discoveries!

So for me it leaves A HUGE place for others to share this Universe, as our Universe cannot be dominated by ANY single life forms! It also means that life will ALWAYS find a spot to go and develop! So in my book, life is much less rare than we can observe at this point! We are just so young and so blind as to where to look with which eye...

Its your guess to think that life isn't anywhere to be seen outside bacterias, but this is an arrogant stance which only fearful scientists are comfortable with!

Come on now Sentrynox, as I've said to others on this forum there's no need to be rude. Can't we have an honest debate without resorting to being rude? There's no need to call me arrogant.

First of all, I never said I believed in only bacteria, just unintelligent life. I really have lots to say on this particular area so I will get back to you on why I believe its unlikely there is intelligent life out there.

Come on now Sentrynox, as I've said to others on this forum there's no need to be rude. Can't we have an honest debate without resorting to being rude? There's no need to call me arrogant.

First of all, I never said I believed in only bacteria, just unintelligent life. I really have lots to say on this particular area so I will get back to you on why I believe its unlikely there is intelligent life out there.

First of all, Human intelligence has arisen because of trades! So it makes our specie a trade based intelligence!
Our specie began trading technologies to survive their geographical situation, either by hunting games, harvesting, fishing, cooking and on... Until today, where we have become a global trading specie! So, knowing that our Universe is really well made we can easily assume that our specie won't trade within itself when going outside our little planet! Because while our planet represent a small ecosystem, the Universe do represent a much larger ecosystem! So knowing this, its most evident that we won't have to trade alone in such Universe, and that other trade based intelligences will arise or have already arisen!
You might ask why trade seems so necessary, its because events in our Universe are from another time scale, and this time scale compare to ours on this planet is so huge that the experience necessary to survive it, isn't accessible to a single specie without trades... Because an event that is going to occur, and that did occur only a million years before, we won't have the experience to know how to handle it, unless we have trade such knowledge with a specie having lived through this event a million years before! In other words, our limited life span will force trades among ALL trade based intelligences in order to survive this changing Universe!

It is why, for life to spread, trade based intelligence cannot arise alone! Even on this planet we did have the Neantherdal and two other homos species living at the same time!! So thinking that we will trade alone in this Universe will mean that we are going toward suicide!! So I do not think that we are alone at all! Many are already up there waiting for us to join them in the trades!

Hold on there Sentrynox, I asked how you knew there was intelligent life, not about trading with intelligent life. If I've understood your post correctly your just assuming intelligent life exists, without a scientific basis for it?

Hold on there Sentrynox, I asked how you knew there was intelligent life, not about trading with intelligent life. If I've understood your post correctly your just assuming intelligent life exists, without a scientific basis for it?

SuperTed, are you in your teens?

Anthropology is A science!! You are asking me about intelligent life equal to us, not equal to an intelligent dolphin living on another planet!
So yes, Humans do indeed have what we call a trade based intelligence that has defined our social traits and even molded our brain over the time!
So based on this, I can say that it is really likely that other trade based intelligences have arisen on other world! I do not base this on astrophysical assumptions but at how likely it is for life to evolve toward a trade base intelligent lifeform!
There is a need for life to complexify itself, and given enough time, life on almost every planet will evolve toward this goal of creating a trade based intelligent being that will reach for the stars to trade and connect with other trade based intelligences!

Well Sentrynox I was civil but no you couldn't be, are you so inept at 'trying' to put your point forward that you need to resort to pettiness?

Lets start slow and lets start from the start, I asked;

"Can I ask, what makes you think there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?"

Now...hmmm....what was your answer? Well to be perfectly honest I can't tell, your paragraphs of nonsense have thrown me. Just to keep you on the straight and narrow here, I want to know WHY you believe there's intelligent life out there. None of your rambling posts have even hinted how you know there's intelligent life out there. All your theories on trade based lifeforms throughout the universe....lol....its all well and good but you need there to be intelligent life for that to work!

Why do I believe that more than likely there is no other intelligent life out there? Well much like your first reply in the this thread;

"Its only because when you see that at every scientific discovery, comes its new set of questions, you understand that the more you discover about the world the less you understand it! Which means that our environment is always becoming weirder as we advance in discoveries!"

When I read this, I thought "this guy's actually on my wavelength". Little did I know your turn out to be a douche. Anyway as a medical scientist I too can't help but be mystified at the human body. The more detail I learn the more it becomes clear that evolution is probably the most amazing force in the universe.

How our blood for example is full of colloid proteins such as albumin and how these proteins enforce Starling's Law but keeping an osmotic force moving against hydrostatic pressure so that tissues can be perfused with nutrients and O2 and waste produces removed. And all this would not function either without the sinusoids of the hepatocytes.

And the above works across all vertebrates! So then comes the remarkable human brain!

Here's a few facts for ya Sentrynox;

1. The universe is 13,730,000,000 years old, humans are 200,000 years old. So that means intelligent life has been in the know universe around 0.001% of that time. The earth is 4,540,000,000 years old, so intelligent life has been on this planet for 0.004% of its life. I would say that's pretty insignificant.

2. Today there are 2,000,000 know species of organisms in the entire world. There's estimated to be 100,000,000 AND that doesn't include extinct organisms!! So let us do some more simple maths, given that this planet is 4,540,000,000 years old, what percentage of its organisms estimated to be alive today are deemed intelligent;

0.000001%

Hmmm...even MORE insignificant number there.

Get where this is going Sentrynox?

3. Our wonderful planet! Not too cold and not too warm! An asteroid knock could very easily make our oceans boil or freeze. The big friendly giant Jupiter makes sure this rarely happens but somehow we've been so lucky to have escaped a major collision in the last 200,000 years.

4. Our planet just so happens to be made up of the right kind of atoms, the right elements in the right quantities. A perfect atmosphere, a perfect size for a perfect gravitational force.

5. Essentially I don't believe there are very many planets out there just like earth, now I don't mean planets roughly the same size, distance from a sun. I mean planets JUST like earth. And if there are....well the origin of life - nobody knows how it started and the theory I believe in is a lightening bolt in the ocean that just so happened to randomly create the first organic matter, along with the first cell membrane. If that theory is correct then the chances of that happening twice are pretty unrealistic BUT I believe it probably has happened in the deepest darkest areas of the universe in strange planets were only thermophiles and such can live. But complex life....hmmm maybe insects....but intelligent life?

You seem to just automatically assume intelligence on other planets....because we are? Not a very intelligent rationale there Sentrynox. The fact we have had a clear spell in earth's history to evolve to this current point is nothing short of a miracle and I believe we won't be here for much longer. We never give it much thought but any year now a huge rock could be on its way to kill all humans on this planet, or even closer to home such as Yellowstone with it's super-volcano.

6. As an atheist I give a pretty good basis for an existence of god! lol

I could string on many more points in a lot more detail to this list but I don't have the time.

Yes, there has been 99.9% of all life forms that have appeared on Earth that are now extinct! And on average any specie has a lifespan of about 4 million years!

As for gravity, you must remember that life began in water first, where gravity didn't have much to do, other than keeping water molecules stick together as a liquid (also the job of the Atmospheric pressure). But you must know that life did have helped shape the current geology of our planet: More Proof of Outer Membrane Cytochrome Role in Electron Transfer

Also, life isn't an isolated phenomenon but a linked phenomenon! Life as you see here is most likely a symbiotic system that can travel across the Universe and diversify on planet surface! The Darwin theory of evolution wasn't really completed before the end of the Genomic project that ended in 2000. From the data gathered in human DNA, Lynn Margulis team lead by Dr. Shiva Singh discover that about 43% of our DNA was viral in origin (virus are most likely from an ET origin)! And this do not count for the various bacterias that are living inside our organism in complete symbiosis!
So to better understand how life evolve and how it is embedding itself inside all Earth living thing, I would suggest you read about Lynn Margulis, Symbiogenesis and Endosymbiosis theories! Then you will understand that life has a plan and is indeed VERY resilient once it takes roots!

But I agree that 4 million years for a specie isn't long, but for an intelligent specie, it is forever!!
Also, you must understand that Humans aren't a simple animal specie, but rather something completely new on this planet! You see, ALL animals, and ALL other lifeforms on Earth do have a very limited creativity! Birds can build nests, Beaver can built dam, but none of them are capable to innovate and start a 3 star bird nest or an electric Hoover dam!
On the other hand, Humans do have an almost unlimited creative potential! They can do anything they can imagine and our creative potential is only equal to its destructive potential, which means that we can blow up our planet, unlike ANY other living thing on this planet!
So taking into accounts that life on Earth is a symbiotic system, we can assume that Humans have an extra edge that all the others do not have!
My theory is that while we have been born on Earth (from mother Earth), we have been seeded with a Universal agent (Universe is our father), like a very unique virus from outer space having mutated human brain (the last two mutations occur 5000 years ago and 37 000 years ago), which has given us an unlimited creative potential!!

So that is in part why I think we are no accident, and that others like us do exist in large numbers!! There is much more to it, but thats the essentials here!

And if you think that there aren't enough planets to have life on it, read this:
Scientists are now saying that they have underestimated the number of stars in our cosmos by 90%! Which means that there are billions of stars not yet accounted for by our dear scientists!!

Now, thats a pretty BIG mistake if you ask me! Suddenly, its like, wow, we can see the sky now (sic)!!
Next, they will stick to their dogma (which is truly abherant to see now) that life might still exist only on our planet now... Even if they were wrong for so long, they are still right about that assessment! Which is ludicrous if you ask me...

"But you must know that life did have helped shape the current geology of our planet:"

So what? Nothing to do with intelligent life outside our planet.

Second;

"(virus are most likely from an ET origin)"

Huh? LOL. Please please can you reference this? You say I should look up and read on Symbiogenesis, strange that because at Uni I did a paper on it in my first year. Yea your dead right, bacteria and viruses make up eukaryotic cells. Human mitochondria, the power houses have there own genes, separate from the main nucleus, and they are very similar to bacterial genes, why? Because mitochondria were once bacteria. Same too with green chlorophyll in plants. But to venture that the viral particles came from space???

Third;

"My theory is that while we have been born on Earth (from mother Earth), we have been seeded with a Universal agent (Universe is our father), like a very unique virus from outer space having mutated human brain (the last two mutations occur 5000 years ago and 37 000 years ago), which has given us an unlimited creative potential!!"

We're back to this ET virus that I'm pretty sure there's absolutely no proof for! No wonder you couldn't just give me this answer when I first asked for it - cause it's crazy!

Fourth;

"by our dear scientists!!", "Even if they were wrong for so long, they are still right about that assessment!"

You go on about how much of a scientist you are yet your quoting a newspaper (not a peer accessed scientific journal) that is undermining scientists? Contradictory anyone?

Lastly, your introduction of Symbiogenesis is yet another reason why intelligent life outside this planet isn't likely. Mitochondria moving into eukaryotic cells for the first, and last time created complex animals. Can you even imagine that first, and only time that happened! What a momentous occasion and you really think something like that just happens every day in the universe!?